The Kiss
by JacquelineJoyeuse
Summary: Stephen's POV on his first kiss with Rory.


**NOTE: All the dialogue is Maureen Johnson's! This is Stephen's POV on his first kiss with Rory. Happy reading! Xx**

Stephen walked into his father's room, unbuttoning his bloody shirt and letting it fall in a starched puddle at his feet. He felt shaken up, but overall alright. He had hit his head pretty hard on the steering wheel, but he had walked away with a simple headache. He was fortunate.

He opened the closet doors, surveying his father's identical white shirts, the faint smell of his father's expensive cologne drifting out. For as long as Stephen could remember, he hated that smell. All the posh charity functions he had been forced to go to, the galas, the dinners…his father used him at those things just as strategically as he used the cologne, Stephen imagined. "Look, this is my son! He's got top marks at Eton, he's captain of the rowing team with plans for Cambridge. Don't I have it all?" After his father was finished listing his accomplishments, he would stiffly pull Stephen into a forced hug, Stephen would catch the smell of the very same cologne coming off his father in overpowering waves, choking him.

And now he would have to smell like him.

Stephen was interrupted from his reverie as Rory walked in. His heartbeat ratcheted up a few notches and he suddenly realized he was shirtless. He hastily threw his shirt back on, leaving it unbuttoned.

A car alarm went off outside. He turned away from Rory to draw the curtains tighter, relieved to have something to do that wasn't noticing her notice him with his shirt off.

"Can you really do all those things you said to Jane?" she asked, partly curious, partly scared. "Make the cameras turn around when she walks down the street, stuff like that?"

"Maybe half of it," he admitted reluctantly. Seeing her face fall, he hastened to assure her. "But your parents will be alright, I promise. And so will Charlotte. Our business can be unpredictable, but the police are good at preventing crime and finding kidnap victims. Their house is being turned over as we speak. She'll be found."

Rory still looked dissatisfied with his answer. "Why didn't you _arrest_ them?" she asked. Stephen wished he could have. He wished he could have done a lot more than arrest them, incidentally.

"Arrest them meant reporting you," he explained. "And I'd just deliberately crashed into their car. We have to lay low until that mess is taken care of. I wish I could have come up with a more elegant solution, but there was no time. Thorpe already thinks I take too many risks…" Stephen trailed off, hating himself just a little bit. He knew he had done what he could, but still, it wasn't enough. He thought that when it came to Rory's safety, it would never be enough.

He sat on the end of the bed, head bowed a little. Rory sat close to him- _very _close. Stephen thought that by the way the bed dipped and the way she braced herself against his shoulder, she maybe didn't mean to sit that close. He also thought the warmth of her thigh touching his was nice. He didn't move away. Neither did she.

Stephen rubbed his face. "I know you're angry at me about what I said at Dawn's flat."

Uncomfortable, Rory looked away. "Whatever," she murmured.

"No, not whatever," he said. He needed her to understand something. "I want to explain. I don't want you to think it's because I think you can't do it, or that I'm upset that you can do more than I can. It's not that I don't think you're capable…I wasn't going to let you sign up for this because your exams weren't going well and you had nothing else to do." Seeing Rory's face harden at this, he shook his head emphatically, ignoring the pounding in his head.

"I didn't put it the way I wanted to. If you joined us, your family could never know what you were doing. Your relationship with them would be severed in many ways." Stephen had heard Rory talk about her family, her home in Louisiana. The love that emanated from her during those stories was a quality that was enchanting to him. It made him love her family a little bit too.

He went on. "I do this because I have nowhere else to go. My sister was my family, and I barely knew her. I had nothing. I've heard you talk about your family, your home. _You_ have somewhere else to go. How would you really feel if you couldn't go home again?"

He could see this hadn't occurred to her. "I could go home…"

He sighed. "No, you couldn't. Not easily. And everything your family knew about you would be a lie. You would never be able to tell them what was going on in your life. If I enlist you, if people higher up than Thorpe actually realize what you are and what you might be able to do, I don't think you would just be treated like a member of an agency. You'd be treated like an asset. And assets don't get to have lives."

Rory had a family, a life. Rory _was_ life, all laughter and light and joy. She deserved better than whatever dark semblance of a half-life being a part of the shades could offer her. She deserved better than whatever Stephen could offer her.

"I never said I wanted to join," she pointed out. "But if I did, at least I'd be with you guys."

Stephen almost laughed. "And if something happened to us, you'd get whatever sad weirdos they managed to recruit after us. Or you'd had no one. If we were disbanded, this whole part of your life would be a big, blank space. You still have a chance to get out and do something else. I do this because it keeps me sane. But it's not easy. A big part of me wishes that I'd been given some other option, but I wasn't. I'm not saying that's easy. I'm not even saying that's what I want. I'm saying you have a chance to have some other kind of life," he concluded. A _better_ life. One that wasn't so submerged in death.

"Maybe I need this life," she said.

She was making this too hard for him. He was making his job to keep her in London harder for himself. The Shadow Cabinet needed her to stay, and joining the shades would ensure that. But Stephen couldn't seem to bring himself to let her. Somewhat subconsciously, he realized he was knowingly putting Rory's wellbeing above London's. God, he really was mad.

"Has it really gone that well for you so far?" he asked pointedly.

She shrugged. "I've seen worse."

That pulled a smile from him. Always so resilient, so achingly optimistic. He had a feeling this girl could endure nuclear winter with a good attitude.

She elbowed him. "There you go, a little smile. I knew you could do it," she said, teasing him.

He laughed a little, looking down again and sighing. "I'm such a miserable sod."

She scoffed. "You're not _that_ bad."

"I know I am," Stephen insisted. He thought again of her unbridled optimism. He worried he would taint it. "I don't want you to end up like me."

"Trust me," she said flippantly. "I am not going to end up like you." He looked at her, _really _allowed myself to look. Those gigantic brown eyes were watching him, and he felt some imperceptible shift occur between them. They weren't Stephen, cop, and Rory, terminus. It was like for once, he was just Stephen and she was just Rory. It felt like they were having a conversation about something else.

"Everything is so messed up," she confessed. "My parents… I need to call them."

As much as he hated it, she couldn't. "That's not advisable right now. Just wait until we've gotten this mess cleared up, at least till morning."

"Why did I do it? Why did I listen to her?" she asked herself, hanging her head and almost violently rubbing her eyes. She seemed to remember something. "They gave me some drugs. No wonder the therapy seemed so intense."

His heart ached. He knew how she felt about therapy. The fact that Rory had been troubled enough to actively seek out help, make herself vulnerable to the wrong people made his self loathing come back full force. He felt as if he had left her to drown in the middle of the ocean with no lifejacket, no boon. He had isolated her. In this way, Stephen had failed her.

"Drugs make people suggestible," he said finally. He didn't want her to think his failure was her own.

She nodded a little. "These people- they're a cult. I'm telling you. They were talking to me about these El…these mystery things in ancient Greece. Something about Demeter and Persephone and…"

"The Eleusinian Mysteries?" he broke in.

"That's the one. Of course you know it," she said wryly, quirking an eyebrow at him.

Somewhat abashedly, he clarified. "Five years of Latin, four of Greek."

"God, what am I going to do? Do I go home?" She looked lost, so, so lost. Her defeated expression broke Stephen's heart all over again.

Putting his arm around her shoulders, he hasted to reassure her, "We decide nothing tonight, all right? It will all be fine, I promise you. We'll make it fine."

"How can you promise to make it fine?" she asked.

So Stephen told her the truth. "You're alive. You're safe and with us. It's already fine. The rest is window dressing."

"You say that," she said, still skeptical, still wanting answers he didn't have.

"Because it is." Stephen gave her shoulder another reassuring squeeze. He realized this was the most he had ever touched Rory. She nestled into him a bit, her nose just barely brushing his neck. Stephen's heartbeat sped up to about 60 kilometers per hour.

He wanted to kiss her. God, he wanted it so bad. In fact, he couldn't remember wanting something this bad ever, in his entire life. But it was wrong, because he was charged to protect her, and he was lying to her, and also she was really sad.

But she wanted to kiss him too. She placed her hand on his chest, leaning forward. Her eyes were trained on his lips. He swallowed hard.

Then he did one of the hardest things he's ever done in his life.

"Rory," he protested quietly, not meaning it at all.

She seemed to understand that. She softly pressed her lips against his anyway. For about two seconds, he was paralyzed. Then, he gave in.

The world opened up. There was a rushing in his ears. What was happening? They kissed slowly, deliberately, fearfully, breaking apart to look at each other. Nuzzling her neck, Stephen noticed she smelled wonderful, like strawberries and sunshine. His hands brushed lightly over her ribcage and she let out a little noise- a half gasp really- that made Stephen want to do other things in order to elicit more noises like that from her.

He still couldn't believe this was _Rory._ Aurora Deveaux. The bravest, loveliest girl he had ever known was kissing him. Her hands were in his hair, his hands were under her shirt, the room was spinning out of control, _he_ was spinning out of control, he felt like he could die…

And then Callum walked in.

"Fuck," Stephen muttered against Rory's lips.


End file.
